


Eridan: take shelter.

by Laylah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Domesticity, Environmental Hazards, Fluff, Flushed Romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 05:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You may not know fuckall about romance according to Karkat's tearjerker flicks, but you know your martial history just fucking fine, and bringing your resources to bear on someone else's fight is a flush gesture with a long and noble tradition. "Lemme come help you out. It'll be easier with company, right? I can help you get the preparations done. An' I can bring provisions for while you're hivebound."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eridan: take shelter.

**Author's Note:**

> For kdubz! Happy birthday, dude. :3

"So if you're free tomorrow, I thought maybe you'd wanna—"

"Can't," Karkat says, before you can even lay out all your romantic plans. "Spore season."

"Did I fuck it up already?" you ask anxiously, cradling your phone against your earfin. "I know I'm dumb about romance, Kar, but just gimme a hint an' I'll try to do better, I will—"

"This isn't _about_ you, Eridan, you hopeless disaster." You think that's his fond annoyance voice, at least. Reception's shitty with as far out as you are, but you like to think you can still catch his tone. "It's _spore season_ , so no, I am not free, because I will be here spraying down all the external surfaces of my hive with a fungicide noxious enough to give me lasting pan damage, to reduce the likelihood that enough faunophage spores get into my hive air filtration unit to clog it utterly and leave me exposed to breathing in their reinforcements, hosting them in my lungs, and drowning unceremoniously in my own immune fluids within the week."

You take a second to just admire the amount of time he can go on without taking a breath, and then what he's saying actually sinks in. "Oh my cod, are you serious? There are flesh-eating fungi descending on your entire area and that's, that's just a _thing_ , that's normal?"

"They don't make it all the way out there, huh," he says flatly. "It figures."

"Why does anyone _live_ on land?" you ask in horror. It's mostly a rhetorical question.

"Oh come on," Karkat says. "Everything out there tries to kill you, too."

"Well, yeah," you admit, "but at least it's not _gross_!" On the one hand, dead is dead; on the other hand, being eaten by sharks is a sight more noble than being eaten by mold with pretensions of grandeur. Then your sense of decency rallies. "You should come stay with me," you say. "Not, like, for good or anything," much as you'd like that, you know it's too soon for that, "but just until spore season's over."

Karkat sighs, blustery and crackling through the connection, and you smile. Wouldn't be Kar if he wasn't fussing over everything. "No," he says. "Thank you for offering. But no. It's—it's still my home, my hive. My place to defend. Even when I'm defending it against an incredibly stupid threat."

You are so head over heels for this kid. "Lemme come help, then."

"I'm sorry?"

You may not know fuckall about romance according to Karkat's tearjerker flicks, but you know your martial history just fucking fine, and bringing your resources to bear on someone else's fight is a flush gesture with a long and noble tradition. "Lemme come help you out. It'll be easier with company, right? I can help you get the preparations done. An' I can bring provisions for while you're hivebound."

Silence on the line for a second. You're still pushing it too fast, you're going to wreck this, you're going to make him feel smothered. "You would do that for me?" His voice is really small. "Come out here and expose yourself to all this gross and unpleasant risk for no good reason, just to keep me company?"

"Keepin' you company _is_ a good reason, Kar," you say.

"Oh," he says. "Oh." There's another silence but it freaks you out a lot less this time. "Okay then."

* * *

There is nothing even remotely glamorous about this battle. Karkat's wearing some utterly godawful biohazard getup to handle the fungicide, and he stuffed you in similarly unappealing nonsense to help out. You're not a stranger to hard work, not really, what with orphaning and FLARP and keeping up your ship, but you don't love drudgery and never have. Sealing up all the ways into Karkat's hive and spraying everything down with gross, toxic orange scum? Definitely drudgery.

"You really gotta do this every sweep?" you ask as you help him haul a third tank of fungicide out onto his lawnring.

"Twice," he says grimly. "Start of the first and fourth dim seasons." He moves as if to wipe the sweat off his forehead and then realizes that's not going to do much good in the suit and mask. "Don't tell me seadwellers get out of having random acts of environmental hostility visited on them."

"Well, there's storms," you say, as Karkat hooks up the new tank to the spray apparatus. "Those get worse the warm end of the year, an' they can take a shiphive right to the bottom if you're not anchored somewhere sheltered." You haul a length of hose around to get at the side of the hive that's still unsprayed. "Shipwreck's a bit romantic, at least."

Karkat turns the pressure valve to get the hose live. "Yes. Nothing but the best avoidable stupidity death for you."

You grin into your mask. "Such a sweet talker, Kar."

"Shut up and let's finish this before you rot any more of the precious few pan cells you have left," he says. He likes you.

You do in fact shut up and finish this. His entire hive is hideous when you're done, covered from roof to ground in a shade of orange that screams _do not touch_. If nothing else it'll make the faunophage spores grossed out by the utter failure of aesthetic design.

"Okay, that'll do," Karkat says. "The wind's starting to pick up, too, so just in time. We should get inside."

"Followin' your lead," you say, and you do. The two of you tromp into the front entryblock of his hive, get the portal shut nice and tight behind you, and leave your biohazard gear in a heap there where it's easily quarantined. You still feel a bit gross without it, to be honest.

"So, you're the guest," Karkat says as he leads the way into the livingblock. "You want the first shower?"

"Well, if you don't," you start, and then you look at the wary face he's making and you can't bring yourself to finish that sentence the way you really want to. God, what if you fuck this up? You couldn't stand to fuck this up. Go slow. "If you don't mind," you revise.

His shoulders relax. You made the right call. "Go ahead," he says. "There's towels already in the block and stuff."

You get a change of clothes out of your bag and you go.

While you're in the shower you think about that nervous look he gave you, and all that insistence on doing stuff for himself, and how confused he was that you'd want to help him out. He doesn't like leaning on people, you already knew that, but it's more than that, isn't it? He doesn't want to _owe_ you, you think. He's afraid you're going to...well, be you.

You stick your face into the spray and let the water run down your skin, let it rinse you clean. Being you hasn't honestly worked out very well for you. Military tactics are all well and good for terrorizing the high seas, but they don't do you a lot of favors when it comes to making people like you. But you're trying to learn. You're working on it. And maybe while this sporefall passes through you can start showing him a bit.

Clean and fresh dressed, your hair still damp, you cede the bathroom to him gracefully. You think there's a little color in his cheeks when he steps by you, and his eyes dart to the open collar of your shirt for just a second.

"Hope you left me some hot water," he grumbles as he gets his scowl back on.

"Course I did," you say. You hope you did. It didn't even occur to you that it was a limited thing.

You leave him alone to get to it, and do your best to banish the immediate thoughts of Karkat taking his clothes off. They're stubborn thoughts. He's grown into his frame lately, put on a healthy amount of weight at last, and you can't help wanting to know. Is he scarred up under those turtlenecks? Is he soft and plush? Would his skin feel different to yours?

Really, you need to stop. You go find your bag again and start pulling things out of it. You've got a plan, and it'd be nice to be all set up before he comes back out here to find you.

Everything's just about in place by the time Karkat comes padding back into the living block, barefoot, his hair sticking to his forehead in wet curls. He scrunches up his face in confusion as you smooth out a corner of the blanket. "Eridan, what is this?"

"It's a picnic," you say. "More or less." He blinks at you, momentarily speechless, which is the most adorable thing. No, strike that—his toes are curling up as he stands there fidgeting, and _that_ is the most adorable thing. "Come sit down." You pat the blanket next to you.

He does, gingerly, like he's not sure what the hell this is all about. "You...brought over supplies for a picnic."

"I'd _planned_ on askin' you out to this real pretty seaside bluff for it, loads more scenic than your livingblock even on a bad night, but then." You shrug. "Spore season, apparently." You hand him the tin of grubcakes, the fancy kind with the jelly in the middle that gets all over your hands when you try to eat them.

Karkat stares at them like he's never seen anything like them before. "Thank you," he says eventually. "Sorry, I'm being weird about this, aren't I? I'm just not used to...." He waves his hand, taking in you, the picnic blanket, the various bits of food you managed to pull together out of your own hive before you came out here.

"Big dumb romantic gestures?" you suggest hopefully.

He smiles, soft and gentle, all this worry just melting off him for a minute. You'd walk a mile barefoot over broken glass to get to that smile. "I guess so." He leans over and kisses your cheek, this quick brush of lips that makes you shiver. "Give me a little while. I'll get the hang of it."

"Take your time," you say. The wind's definitely picked up outside, and you think if you listen close you can hear the soft _paf_ of sporefall against the painted-over viewpanes. Now that you're safe inside with Kar, being trapped by that stuff almost seems nice. "I ain't goin' anywhere."


End file.
